


Underwear

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: Pick Me Up [28]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016-2017 NHL Season, 2017-2018 NHL Season, M/M, Pick-Up Lines, Winnipeg Jets, wanton cruelty to the common comma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 00:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15084617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: "Patrik knows, logically, that pretty much everyone has a rookie crush on their captain.That said, he’d really like to know why his hasn’t gone away yet."





	Underwear

Patrik knows, logically, that pretty much everyone has a rookie crush on their captain or at least an alternate, and that while his shot may be special, his emotions certainly aren’t.

That said, he’d really like to know why his hasn’t gone away yet. 

After all, these things are supposed to have a natural expiration date; they’re not supposed to last beyond the rush of that first season, the hero worship dying down, replaced by respect for a capable teammate. Except that Patrik isn’t so certain that what he’s feeling for his captain _is_ hero worship, actually, not anymore. He’s pretty sure it was, at one point, but it isn’t now, and there’s no real indication of where it changed along the way, of what it changed into. He feels a little lost in a way he normally turns to hockey to cure, except that, for once, hockey is kind of the source of the complication.

Patrik really doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Normally, in a situation like this, he’d ask Wheels for help, but that’s the last think he wants to do here, and not only because Wheels is sort of tangentially involved. No, it’s also because this doesn’t feel like a big enough problem to bother anyone with. It’s such a small thing, a crush that didn’t go away when it was supposed to. Anyway, it seems to Patrik like there’s a good chance of it going away on its own still, and he resolves to ignore it as much as he can until it does.

\---

_Patrik never thought Wheels was the type to get up and make a dramatic speech during an intermission, not the flashy or loud kind of captain but quiet and stable, and he’d seen nothing in the first five weeks that made him think his first impression was wrong - right up until Wheels stood up, walked to the middle of the room, and sighed. “I know nobody expects us to do much this season, but that doesn’t mean we have to prove them right.” He sighed again. “I know we can all do better than this, so let’s… Can we just go out there and try not to embarrass ourselves for the last twenty minutes?”_

_Which wasn’t exactly the kind of inspirational speech captains always made in the movies, except… it actually kind of worked? Or, at least, Wheels got a fistbump from Scheifs and survived a chestbump from Buff, and everyone else was sort of nodding along and looking weirdly determined. And Patrik looked at Wheels, at his nice, honest, tired face, and thought that there was probably nobody better suited to captaining this team, not in all the locker rooms in the world, because he could say something like that and look disappointed, and suddenly everyone would find an extra gear that they didn’t think they had._

_And Patrik thought:_ So help me, I believe him too.

\---

On Tuesdays, whenever possible, Patrik has Nik over to play Call of Duty. On the road, Patrik sets up his XBox, hooks it up to the hotel TV (or two, if he can get an extra), and they play until Wheels knocks politely on the door to tell them it’s naptime. At home, they carpool to and from practice, if it’s not a gameday, and sometimes Patrik’s mom makes snacks, which is pretty awesome of her. Patrik makes sure to thank her, grateful she’s decided to stay with him for one more season, but Nik is always profusely complimentary, and Patrik’s mother gives him _looks_ , as if to say _What a nice young man_ and _Why don’t you just ask him out already?_

And Nik is attractive, sure, but Patrik just doesn’t see him that way. He’s more like a brother, a cousin, a best friend. Besides, he’s useless at Call of Duty, and no matter how much they play he never seems to get better at all. Besides that, he cheats, always looking over at Patrik’s screen to see where he is on the map. And even with that, he still hardly ever wins! It’s a disgrace, really.

In a lot of ways, of course, it would be easier for Patrik if he _were_ interested in Nik, who’s close to his age and who actually enjoys his company on a regular basis, whose company Patrik enjoys just as much. Maybe then he would have managed to stop having his rookie crush a long time ago. But he doesn’t, and he hasn’t, and even yet another victory can’t get Wheels off his mind.

\---

_They were in Edmonton, a tight game, pushing as hard as they could to win it, not to lose ground in the difficult Central. Patrik skated hard, so hard, and then the puck bounced off the goalie, right to him, and the net was wide open in front of him, and Patrik dropped to one knee, sniped it home, the movement natural and practiced._

_The goal horn sounded, high and blaring and_ wrong _, and Patrik’s legs kept taking him to the bench but his mind froze. He went red, so red, upset and embarrassed. A warm weight pressed itself against his side, draped itself over his shoulders. Whoever it was, he hoped they wouldn’t say anything to him. He didn’t feel like he deserved any comfort just then, not after fucking up, after probably costing them the game. He wasn’t sure if he could even keep playing, after something like that. And if they said something less than comforting? He wasn’t sure he could bear it._

_But it was Wheels there next to him. “Cheer up, kid,” he said. “We all do stupid shit sometimes, it’s not the end of the world.” And Patrik knew that was true on some level, of course, but, all the same, he hadn’t really believed it. This mistake was a major one, and it had turned his talent into a mockery, left so much room for self-doubt._

_Hearing it from Wheels, though, was different. Hearing it from Wheels was just enough to convince him of the truth of it._

\---

“Hey, can you help me practice something?” Patrik asks Helly, as the rest of the team trickles off the ice.

“I can’t take any more shots today, if that’s what you mean,” Helly says.

“Actually, I was hoping you could hang out behind the net and help me with my penalty shots? Like, telling me when my approach is too obvious, when most goalies would make the save, things like that?”

“Well, as long as you’re not scoring on me again,” says Helly, chuckling, and Patrik finds that he can laugh about it too now, with time, distance, and Wheels having taken the sting out of it long ago.

He can’t use a shooter-tutor, because Helly says it would be too difficult to see through, but the shots aren’t the important part here and anyway Patrik knows the places where a goalie has trouble covering the net. He begs a mat and a chair from the ice crew, and it’s funny to see Helly sitting back there with his mask on - “just to be safe” - leaning forwards and back, side to side, as Patrik nears the net, to see his glove hand come up even with no glove on it. Patrik doesn’t laugh, though, because goalies are too important to risk offending, and because Helly has actually been very helpful - “you’re not Barkov, in close isn’t necessarily where you have to shoot from” - but someone does laugh, quietly, from the bench, and Patrik looks over to see Wheels’ blinding grin, feeling his heart beat hard in his chest all of a sudden.

\---

_They missed the playoffs by both an inch and a mile. That, after all, has always been the problem with hockey - someone had to lose, and this season, too often, it was the Jets who did so. Patrik couldn’t help, sometimes, remembering the feeling of knowing they wouldn’t make it, remembering the bitter spite that propelled him through the end of the season, as they reeled off seven good wins in a row even though they all knew it was already too late._

_After locker cleanout, after the press were gone, after the gentle accusations and the failing promises spoken in soft and sorry voices, Wheels sat alone and still in his empty stall and hung his head. And Patrik knew he should leave him alone, would have if it had been anyone else, but his hockey crush and his hubris had him sitting next to Wheels, watching as the team said their farewells and filed out._

_“I don’t know what to do,” Wheels said, quietly, head still in his hands. “I don’t know how I can call myself a leader when I’m not even sure if I believe what I say anymore.”_

_Patrik reached out, laid a hand on Wheels’ back, tense with the weight of so many accumulated failures, and said, “But I do.” And he felt Wheels’ breath catch, the slight jump of his back against his palm, and waited for the next season, his own breath frozen in his chest, to be able to prove it._

\---

There’s a point during the season where Patrik knows he’s going to break 40 goals. Maybe some people would say that it’s a little early, that it’s overconfident of him to feel this way after his first ten, but the math checks out and he has a feeling he won’t lose time to injury this year. It only makes him feel more confident when he’s on the bench, his captain thumping him on the back and Nik giggling with the excitement of scoring.

After the game, though, Patrik is idly staring at Wheels through a crowd of teammates high on yet another victory when it suddenly occurs to him that he’s not thinking of Wheels as his captain right now. And that’s a lot to realise, really, because you definitely can’t call it a rookie crush anymore if you’re not a rookie _and_ you only think of him as ‘captain’ on the ice. And even though he sort of knew it already, even though he’s been waiting to figure out what it really is that he’s been feeling, that thought is enough to make him skip the rest of his normal cooldown routine and head straight for the showers, where he can think in peace for as long as he wants.

Like Ovechkin, Patrik has never been particularly bothered by nudity in the room, so he’s towelling off his hair as he heads to his stall and discovers that his underwear is gone. He has no real issues going without them, especially since he isn’t planning to go out tonight, and judging by Troubs’ conspicuous absence and the way Nik won’t look at him, the culprits are obvious. But he’d spent his shower thinking hard about what he wants out of life, besides hockey, and now he sees a certain amount of potential in the situation. So he’ll take it as a sign.

Patrik secures his towel low around his hips, out of deference to the American sense of modesty, and goes to talk to Wheels, who’s messing with something on the top shelf of his stall. He turns to face Patrik with barely a twitch, eyes fixed on his face, and Patrik is seized with the urge to shatter his poker face for once. “Have you seen my underwear?” he asks, readying himself to drop the other shoe.

“No, did someone steal them?” Wheels asks in turn, just a normal day in the Jets’ locker room.

Patrik ignores it. “Well, would you like to see them?” he asks, smiling mischievously.

“What? Oh,” says Wheels, going pink, and Patrik is already celebrating when he continues. “If you mean what I think you mean, then yeah, it might be worth a try.”

And when Patrik lunges in to hug him, Wheels is already waiting with arms wide open, ready to hold him tight.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I still remember my 'rookie crush' even though it's been a decade now.  
> \- I sort of wondered: how could it go from 'rookie crush' to 'actually this is a real person whom I like and respect a lot (also he is very attractive thanks)'?  
> \- The original pickup line, of course, is "Can you see my underwear?" but this worked a little better with the whole hockey thing.  
> \- Why did it take three weeks to write this? ...no comment.


End file.
